... An unfree tenant of manorial land under the feudal system. A villein held his land by agricultural services, by working on the demesne , and by boon work . The term was introduced by the Normans and gradually fell into disuse after the consequences of the Black Death had altered the supply of...

... (from Latin villanus , ‘villager’)
A medieval peasant entirely subject to a lord or attached to a manor, similar to a serf . Both groups were part of the manorial system which dominated Europe between the 4th and 13th centuries. Villeins provided labour services to the lord (in return for tilling their own strips of land). By the 13th century villeins in England had become unfree tenants. In Europe they had fewer duties and remained essentially free peasants, creating a significant difference in rank to the serfs. By the 15th century, even in...

J. A. Cannon

...of the north, and parts of the west. Villeins on crown estates were likely to have more privileges. As royal justice developed, the status of villeins sank, since they had no access to royal courts and could not serve as jurors. There were several ways in which they could escape from villeinage—by purchasing freedom from the lord ( commutation ); by escaping to a town for one year and one day; by taking holy orders (with the lord’s permission). By the end of the 14th cent. villeinage was clearly disintegrating, villeins changing their status to that of...

... was the term used to describe a peasant in a state of serfdom —i.e. subject to a lord and under obligation to perform labour services. The term ‘villanus’ was used in Domesday Book without any derogatory flavour to indicate persons who lived in ‘vills’—and therefore formed the largest social class. Though not free men, they were above the bordars and cottars who held less land, and well above the slaves, who had been numerous in Saxon England. But the term is not precise and status and duties varied from manor to manor, region to region, and over time....

...and had a greater chance of being enfranchised than other villeins. The villeins of the Commune paid an annual tax, villanzio , and were forbidden to leave the land they held; they could not be transformed into the villeins of individuals, and the state could reclaim all the fugitive villani Comunis . The institution of the villeins of the Commune offers insight into Byz. agrarian history before 1204 . D. Jacoby , HC 6:207–14. F. Thiriet , La condition paysanne et les problèmes de l'exploitation rurale en Romanie greco-vénitienne , StVen 9 (1967)...

... in medieval England, a feudal tenant entirely subject to a lord or manor to whom he paid dues and services in return for land. The word is recorded from Middle English, and is a variant of villain...

... . An unfree tenant of manorial land under the feudal system . A villein held his land by agricultural services, by working on the demesne , and by boon work . The term was introduced by the Normans and gradually fell into disuse after the consequences of the Black Death had altered the supply of...

(δημοσιάριος, from demosion, “state treasury”), a fiscal category of peasants whose nature is unclear. Demosiarioi appear in only a handful of documents from the mid-10th through the mid-11th C.; in ...

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